David Cross doesn’t do ‘dad comedy’ (OK, maybe a little)

By Nick A. Zaino III, Globe CorrespondentMay 18, 2018

A lot has changed since David Cross’s “Making America Great Again!” tour in 2016. Donald Trump won the presidential election. Cross and his wife, actress Amber Tamblyn, had a daughter, their first child, in February 2017. And he has taped season five of “Arrested Development,” which premieres on Netflix May 29. So Cross will have plenty to talk about when his new “Oh, Come On!” tour comes to the Wilbur Theatre June 17-18.

Cross has been working on material for the 46-city tour at smaller clubs around Brooklyn since the beginning of the year, and fans can get a taste of what’s to come at Cross’s Boston Calling appearance May 27. “It’s kind of my usual, politics and some religion, and some just stupid goofy [stuff] and some anecdotal [stuff],” he says, though he is careful not to reveal specifics.

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Being a first-time father is one of the subjects he’s been working on, trying to find a way to do it that hasn’t been worked to death by other comics. “I address that in the top of the show,” he says. “Look, this has been my world for the last year, you know, is this kid. But it’s certainly not an hour of dad comedy. I would never do that to people, much less myself.”

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In the Netflix special taped during his “Making America Great Again!” tour, Cross says he wasn’t surprised by Trump’s rise in the Republican primaries. But that didn’t prepare him for Trump winning the whole thing. When the election results came in, Cross was working in London, trying to get through a meeting with network executives. “I barely had any sleep and I was really sick,” he says. “It just manifested itself physically, that sick feeling I had, and that reality.”

The Trump presidency will be on the docket on this tour, but it won’t dominate the show. It didn’t even dominate the last special (despite its title), which included riffs on luggage stores at the airport, vaping, and a dysfunctional family Thanksgiving. “I hope it’s an even mixture where it doesn’t feel like it’s too much of one thing, which I’ve always been very sensitive to,” says Cross. It frustrates him when people focus on the angrier material. “Two-thirds of the set has nothing to do with any kind of political statement or anything.”

There will be plenty of what Cross calls “silly” or “dumb” jokes that should have a wide appeal. “I want everybody to enjoy at least the first 20 minutes,” he says. “Even if you love Trump and you’re a true Sean Hannity patriotic, right-wing Christian conservative, at least you’ll like the first 20 to 25 minutes of the show. And if you end up walking out an hour into the show, I get it. But at least I gave you that part.”

Cross considers writing for television his main job, though stand-up is a huge part of his identity. “It’s just singular, you know?” he says. “It’s just me, and pretty much I just write onstage, really. So it’s me and the audience in that moment, and it doesn’t feel like the work that writing a series does.”

Being able to play Tobias Fünke on “Arrested Development” is also a joy for Cross. “I love that it exists,” he says. “I love getting to work on it. That’s a really fun character to do, and it’s just absolutely the best cast you could ever ask to work with.” Just don’t ask him what the new season will look like. He’ll find out with the rest of the show’s fans when it streams at the end of May. “We shot for four months and we did some reshoots, and I do not know what is in there and what’s not,” he says. “It would be foolish for me to speculate because I could be talking about an entire plot thread that doesn’t exist anymore.”

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Fans of the original “Mr. Show” from HBO and its Netflix incarnation, “W/Bob & David,” can hold out hope for another season of that show. Cross says it’s just a matter of logistics and Bob Odenkirk’s shooting schedule with “Better Call Saul.” That’s always been the main obstacle, though the dynamic has changed since Odenkirk’s kids are going off to college and Cross has a daughter at home. Odenkirk would have to go to New York, where Cross is based, to work on new material, but the desire to make a new season is there.

“The short answer is: We would love to and we will try to figure out a time,” says Cross. “We both want to do it. We have some really good sketches left over from the last time that never made it in that we’d like to get to.”

David Cross

At the Wilbur Theatre, June 17-18 at 8 p.m. Tickets $31-$41, 617-248-9700, www.thewilbur.com